Great video to learn and understand what counts in an apologetic debate. Rich Pierce nicely analyzes and comments on the cross examination period by Leighton Flowers and James White. The topic of this debate is Romans 9. Flowers unfortunately drifts off and tries to avoid the topic by stalling, I really admire James White for staying so calm.

b) Developing an applying a Christian worldview is an essential part of our sanctification as believers, our growth in godliness and spiritual maturity

Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.’ – Matthew 22:37

Thinking the way God wants you to think

Thinking God’s thoughts after him

Don’t think as the world does, but like Christ

c) As Christians we are called by God not only to think in a Christian way our self, but also to engage with people who aren’t thinking in a Christian way; because we want to honor God and love our neighbors

For the sake of honoring truth and proclaiming the Gospel

Focus on the root of our differences

Engaging the worldview

3. How worldviews change

Conversion is also a change of worldview

Humans resist change

“Worldviews are like houses” – we get comfortable, used to them / it

It is hard for a person to change his or her worldview

The Holy Spirit might be pleased to use our pointers to change a person

My professor of apologetics in seminary told stories of odd reactions he received when he would tell people what he did for a living. The best story involved a bank loan officer. When he told the loan officer that he was a professor of apologetics, she replied, “That’s wonderful.” Then she added, “These days, we really do need to teach people how to say they are sorry.”

The loan officer was both right and wrong. We do need apologetics professors, but apologetics isn’t about saying we’re sorry. Rather, it’s about defending the faith. In fact, defending the faith is so urgent today that we need more than apologetics professors—we need all Christians to realize that they are apologists.

One of Dr. R.C. Sproul’s recent books is titled Everyone’s a Theologian. We could say equally that “everyone’s an apologist.” Those who are in Christ and have been brought to see the truth and beauty of the gospel have both the obligation and the privilege to defend it. We are compelled “to give an answer.” We can’t simply rely on the philosophically gifted or the culturally adept to carry the weight here. Everyone is an apologist.

The Command

The Greek word apologia means literally “to speak to.” Over time, it came to mean “to make a defense.” When Athens accused Socrates of being harmful to society, Socrates had to offer his defense. He titled it Apologia. He stood before the “men of Athens,” offering his reasoned defense. The New Testament uses the word seventeen times. Many instances concern court cases, such as the time Paul appeared before the Jewish Council in Acts 22 and before Festus in Acts 25. Paul also speaks of his imprisonment in Rome as an apologia of the gospel (Phil. 1:7, 16).